well I broke down and bought the one that voomvoom mentioned from Radio Shack. They had it on sale/clearance for under 20 bucks so I figured what the heck and bought it.
With Coolsat coming out with updated firmware for the 8000 and wanting to start utilizing channelmaster again I guess I had to get it.
You went from Aug to Feb without a serial port! I thought that I had a hard time making up my mind.
I guess I missed the earlier messages in the thread. Sorry to see that you have Vista, that is likely to cause a headache. Until there is no alternative, that isn't coming near one of my computers.
But back to the USB-Serial converters, I have 2 or 3 of the things, one VERY old, possibly before XP came out, and I also have a newer one (about 2 years old) that I got at Radio Shack, so it might be the same one you have. Both can be made to work with anything, however the OLD one is MUCH better, and you can get them much cheaper, although I don't know if Vista would play well with it.
The old one (I forget the brand name, but I've seen them sold under a couple different brand names, and all that is printed on the device itself is Model # UC232A, but I can look up the brand later), doesn't try to be "smart" with windows. You just plug it in, and it works. The newer RS one, however, apparently has drivers that tries to interact with Windows more, and at first I had a hard time getting it to work with some software.
I can't remember all the issues, however one issue was that I think the RS drivers refused to use the lower number serial ports, ie 1-4, and some of the older software will not work with port numbers above 4. The RS converter could be manually configured to low port numbers, but it put up a fight, and when I did that, it wouldn't work on either port.
Also, even though most programs generally have the capability of changing the port parameters, often this doesn't work smoothly with some of these USB-Serial converters, and I've had to go into the control panel and first change the parameters to match those used by the software I was going to run. This SHOULDN'T be necessary, but I've seen several cases where the software wouldn't run until I did this.
Also the newer versions of Windows (this was true for XP too) seemed to try to recognize what was connected to the serial ports, and usually got it wrong, and again, my OLD converter seemed to work better, I think because with IT, Windows didn't have a clue with respect to what was connected, which is desirable.
Another thing, I've used, but had lots of problems with these USB Hub things, which turn a single USB port into multiple USB ports. The problem, when it came to serial converters, is that I'd plug the converter into one port, and it would work. Then I'd pull the USB converter out, and weeks later, I'd plug it in again, but into another port on the HUB, and it would tell me that the port number I was using with the software was already in use, ie it was reserved by Windows as being for the device when it was in the other port, so I'd have to choose a different port number on the software and converter. Before I realized what was happening, I had used up all the port numbers. I never have this problem when using the regular on board ports, only with the external hub.
Anyway, all these "problems" are just annoyances, and you can get it working with anything, but the newer the converter, and the newer the OS, and the use of HUBs make it more annoying. If you install the thing, and use it on the same port, with the same port numbers each time, you probably won't have a problem. I use my RS converter only with one program I wrote myself, because it was harder to set up, but my OLD converter, I use with a dozen different programs, and have no problems with it. With computers, OLD is often better.
EDIT: BTW, I just looked for the disk that came with my OLD USB-Serial converter, and it is an "IOGEAR" , although the drivers installed under the name "ATEN". Anyway, I recommend that one as being less troublesome, at least with Win98, Win2K, and Win-XP. I still see them sold, and they are usually cheap, compared to the RS one.
